http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562528/site/newsweek/
Where’s the Outrage?
Bush’s defense of his phone-spying program has disturbing echoes of
arguments once used by South Africa’s apartheid regime. Why Americans
should examine the parallels.
Web-Exclusive Commentary
By Arlene Getz
Newsweek
Updated: 3:33 p.m. ET Dec. 21, 2005
Dec. 21, 2005 - Back in the 1980s, when I was living in Johannesburg
and reporting on apartheid South Africa, a white neighbor proffered a
tasteless confession. She was "quite relieved," she told me, that new
media restrictions prohibited our reporting on government repression.
No matter that Pretoria was detaining tens of thousands of people
without real evidence of wrongdoing. No matter that many of them,
including children, were being tortured—sometimes to death. No matter
that government hit squads were killing political opponents. No matter
that police were shooting into crowds of black civilians protesting
against their disenfranchisement. "It's so nice," confided my
neighbor, "not to open the papers and read all that bad news."
I thought about that neighbor this week, as reports dribbled out about
President George W. Bush's sanctioning of warrantless eavesdropping on
American conversations. For anyone who has lived under an
authoritarian regime, phone tapping—or at least the threat of it—is
always a given. But U.S. citizens have always been lucky enough to
believe themselves protected from such government intrusion. So why
have they reacted so insipidly to yet another post-9/11 erosion of
U.S. civil liberties?
I'm sure there are many well-meaning Americans who agree with their
president's explanation that it's all a necessary evil (and that
patriotic citizens will not be spied on unless they dial up Osama bin
Laden). But the nasty echoes of apartheid South Africa should at least
give them pause. While Bush uses the rhetoric of "evildoers" and the
"global war on terror," Pretoria talked of "total onslaught." This was
the catchphrase of P. W. Botha, South Africa's head of state from 1978
to 1989. Botha was hardly the first white South African leader to ride
roughshod over civil liberties for all races, but he did it more
effectively than many of his predecessors. Botha liked to tell South
Africans that the country was under "total onslaught" from forces both
within and without, and that this global assault was his rationale for
allowing opponents to be jailed, beaten or killed. Likewise, the Bush
administration has adopted the argument that anything is justified in
the name of national security.
Botha was right about South Africa being under attack. Internally,
blacks and a few whites were waging a low-level guerrilla war to
topple the government. Externally, activists across the globe were
mobilizing economic sanctions and campaigns to ostracize Pretoria. By
the same token, we all know that Bush is right about the United States
facing a very real threat of further terror. Yet should Americans
really be willing to accept that autocratic end-justifies-the-means
argument?
For so many around the world, the United States is as much a symbol as
a nation. Outsiders may scoff at American naiveté in thinking that
their conversations are private, but they envy them for growing up in
a society so sheltered that it made such a belief possible. Among
those who feel this way is Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African
Anglican leader who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his principled fight
for justice in his native country. "It's unbelievable," he told me in
an interview, "that a country that many of us have looked to as the
bastion of true freedom could now have eroded so many of the liberties
we believed were upheld almost religiously."
Tutu recalled teaching in Jacksonville, Fla., when Bush won
re-election in 2004. "I was shocked," he said, "because I had naively
believed all these many years that Americans genuinely believed in
freedom of speech. [But I] discovered there that when you made an
utterance that was remotely contrary to what the White House was
saying, then they attacked you. For a South African the déjŕ vu was
frightening. They behaved exactly the same way that used to happen
here—vilifying those who are putting forward a slightly different
view." Tutu made these comments to me exactly a year ago next week. I
haven't seen any reaction from him about the latest eavesdropping
revelations, but I doubt he is remotely surprised at the U.S.
president's response: a defense of the tactic, together with a warning
that the government would launch an investigation to find out who
leaked the news to The New York Times.
It's not fair, of course, to suggest that all citizens are indifferent
to violations of their privacy and their rights to free speech. Yet as
I've watched this debate play out, it's hard to avoid the conclusion
that not enough Americans really care. Like my Johannesburg neighbor,
they seem to hope that unpleasant news will disappear if you just
ignore it. It didn't then, and it won't now.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
--
Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
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